David S. Cohen

Writer - Journalist - Photographer

brings 30 years of experience to his coverage of entertainment, culture and global business.

David's love of show business dates back to a fan letter he wrote to Lassie as a toddler (with the help of a babysitter). Receiving an autographed picture of Lassie and Timmy in the mail, he was hooked. Some years later, he went on to study acting and directing at the State University of New York at Albany, graduating summa cum laude in 1981 and becoming the first theatre major in the school's history to be inducted Phi Beta Kappa. While there, he stage managed a rare American production by legendary Czech scenographer Josef Svoboda.

He worked as a stagehand in regional theaters before moving to New York City, where he directed and stage managed in Off-Off Broadway theatre. As a Broadway casting assistant, he worked on legendary flops Carrie and Legs Diamond as well as such hits as M. Butterfly and The Piano Lesson. He went on to learn the ins and outs of TV finance and writing deals while helping to represent top television writers at a New York literary agency.

In 1992, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue writing, earning his living in the business office of the hit sitcom Home Improvement. Later he evaluated scripts for movie producers including Turner Pictures, Simpson/Bruckheimer Productions and the Kennedy-Marshall Company. Working with writing partner Martin Winer, he soon sold a script to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; the pair received sole "Written by" on the episode "Destiny."

Discovering a passion for true stories, he moved into journalism, cutting his teeth in 1996 as the first Los Angeles stringer for the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong. Since then his versatility and inside knowledge of the entertainment industry have kept him in demand as a freelance writer for publications around the world.

His celebrity profiles and film articles have appeared in Total Film, Heat and Okay! magazines in the U.K. and the Jerusalem Post; he covered Hong Kong fashion designer Barney Cheng’s American debut for Cathay Pacific’s inflight magazine, Discovery. He also written about computer graphics for the science magazine Discover. He wrote Script magazine’s “From Script to Screen” articles, with occasional short interruptions, almost from the series’ inception. After more than a decade and in-depth interviews with screenwriters, directors and producers of some 60-odd feature films, those articles became the basis of Cohen’s first book, Screen Plays: How 25 Scripts Made It To A Theater Near You — For Better or Worse. (HarperCollins, Feb. 2008)

He also has a background in science and terrorism research. He did technical research for development on several films, including early work on the movie version of Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears. He drew on that experience when, after the 9/11 attacks, he reported on the aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks for Tradeshow Week magazine. That coverage extended to businesses' reaction to the crisis, the future of business travel, venue security, and business repercussions of the attacks.

He began freelancing for the "entertainment bible” Variety in the late 1990s, covering every aspect of film and television. He was hired on by Variety as a copy editor in 2002 and moved on to be a news reporter. He is now a features editor, news reporter and columnist whose coverage of the visual effects industry has earned an international following. He also covers post-production, 3D and production technology, and in that role, has spearheaded the venerable trade’s expanding coverage of technology and the digital revolution.For Variety, he has attended and covered the Emmys, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Visual Effects Society Awards, the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards, Academy Governors’ Awards and the Oscars. He’s also reported from the field on the Consumer Electronics Show, NAB Show, SIGGRAPH conference, and more. In 2014 he received a Maggie Award for his Variety cover story on Alfonso Cuaron and Gravity, and a Southern California Journalism Award for his Variety cover story on the demise of 35mm film prints. He is in nearly constant demand as a speaker, moderator and radio commentator, and has presented at the FMX conference in Stuttgart, the View conference in Turin and the Mindtrek conference in Tampere, Finland.

He is an avid traveller and travel photographer who has sampled duck tongues in Hong Kong, supped on soup with banana flowers in Bangkok, sipped Scotch in Edinburgh and slurped dou yar from a street vendor in old Chengdu — before the city disappeared under the waters upriver of the Three Gorges dam. In his spare time, he enjoys swimming and cycling — He completed the City of Los Angeles Triathlon in 2004 — as well as cooking and, of course, moviegoing.